Archive for February, 2007

I’m a bit disappointed in the company I bought it from though. The instructions for gluing support structures onto wing surfaces say that when you are cutting away the plastic film on the wing surface so you have a clean place to glue to, you have to be careful not to cut through the plastic film and into the wood underneath because it’s extrememly then and cutting it seriously decreases the structural strength of the wood. Well, as I’m working on the aileron servo mount problem, I remove the reinforcing bracket they glued into place on the underside of the wing for me to mount the servo to, and I find out as I’m cutting away plastic film to increase the size of the support bracket that THEY cut through the wing surface when they originally cut back on the film to put their original bracket in place. So, that explains why the servo broke loose from the mount. Well, I fixed it by gluing support brackets on the bottom and top sides of the wing surface skin, with both sides larger than the original support bracket size so they encompass unbroken wood all around the outer edges (which is all that really matters when it comes to shear strength of the bracket area, the cut and broken portion inside the wood sandwich is effectively rendered moot by the larger bracket size).

Anyway, that’s why my next plane isn’t going to be a mostly pre-built plane, it’s a build it from scratch, we give you the wood and the plans, type affair. I take care to build things right. Someone making $6/hour and not flying the plane when it’s done doesn’t.

So, I flew my plane on Saturday. I had 4 flights, and didn’t crash my plane a single time. In fact I even ran it out of fuel mid-air once and successfully made what is called a “dead-stick” landing. All in all a good day.

I went back out today and had 4 more good flights today. However, I noticed a funny sound coming from the airplane during some high speed flight. It alsmost sounded kinda like helicopter blades beating against the air. They call that “flutter”. It’s when one of the control surfaces on the airplace starts to reverberate during flight. After I got home, I checked the airplane over closely and found that the elevator had a loose control horn that could cause flutter. In addition, I found that the servo that controls the ailerons had actually broke some of the wood around the servo mount, which could also cause flutter and was likely the cause of the occasional odd movements of the plane I noticed today.

So, I’ll have to repair the plane before flying it again. I’ve already fixed the loose control horn, now I just have to fix the broken wood. It shouldn’t be too bad to fix, just a little difficult to get to on an assembled plane. Then I’ll go fly again.

So, most of you know about my R/C truck that I’ve had for a couple years (that thing *still* screams its way around). But. lately I’ve been spending my free time with an R/C flight simulator (Real Flight G3.5). This thing is amazingly realistic. It doesn’t simulate flying a plane from the cockpit like regular flight simulators, it simulates running R/C controls from the ground and watching your plane. It’s intended to help new R/C pilots fly their first plane successfully instead of crashing it on their maiden voyage. It’s also intended to help experienced pilots get a feel for a new model’s behavior before their first flight of that model, or to practice advanced maneuvors before trying it on the plane and possible wadding it up. For all these things, it is amazingly good. They use a true to life physics model, and accurate modeling of the plane’s airfoils, dimensions, weight, balance, etc. in order to make accurate physics calculations of how the plane will handle and behave. As long as the model’s traits are accurate in the simulator, it very closely mimics real life (up to a point, if the model would fly at 200+ miles per hour, then their calculations start to differ from real life because in order to make all the calculations in real time, they use some short cuts for the physics that start to falter at very high velocities like that).

Anyway, after having spent about a month playing with this thing off and on in my spare time, and at the same time build a trainer class airplane, I’m planning on heading to the airfield closest to my house today, meeting up with the airfield’s owner, and hopefully getting my maiden flight in.

I’ve also ordered my second plane. But this time I ordered a kit that needs assembled instead of a mostly assembled aircraft, so I should have plenty of practice in on my trainer before my next plane is built. That way my skills are ready to graduate up to this more difficult to fly model by the time I’m done.

The trainer I got is the largest size trainer you can get. That way you can see it easier at long distances. If I get to fly it today, maybe I’ll take a few shots with the camera.

After seeing the oncologist at VSH yesterday, Rocky has been diagnosed as possibly only having “weeks” to go before he can’t eat any longer and we have to put him to sleep [1]. We told him that we wanted to make sure that for whatever time he had left, he was comfortable as possible. Since we were opting not to do chemo or radiation treatment [2], surgery is more or less useless. So, in order to keep Rocky pain free, the oncologist went over his blood work then prescribed buprenorphine. This chemical is used to treat all sorts of opiod addictions, including morphine addiction. His previous pain med was ketoprophen (sp?) and was technically an anti-inflammatory, so it might have helped the pain by reducing inflamation or blocking certain pain chemicals in the cellular metabolic process, like aspirin or tylenol do, but it wasn’t a narcotic that just makes you not care about the pain. His new med is. He got his first dose this morning. Now he’s sitting around with that characteristic narcotic “I kinda know what’s going on, but everything is *real* *slow*” look. I think he’s high. Better to spend his remaining time high and happy than struggling and in pain as far as I’m concerned. So, Rocky, you’ll get the best food you want to eat, even if that means I cook you a hamburger and some bacon each day, and you’ll be high for as long as the high staves off the pain. Enjoy your time.

Edit: forgot the footnotes :-/

1. When my grandmother had a double heart attack about 3 years ago, they said she had “weeks” to live. She’s still living at my mothers house. So, we know how “weeks” can go sometimes.

2. Radiation and chemo are neither one guaranteed to take out the cancer, and both are extremely upsetting to an animal (coming in daily for radiation and being sore from it, or coming in weekly for chemo and being sick from that, or both). In addition to not necessarily guaranteeing a good result, and tormenting the animal, it’s very expensive ($3,000 – $5,000 total). So, in light of those facts, we chose to make Rocky comfortable for as long as possible instead of tormenting him for a few more weeks. We learned our lesson on Zeus. We tried everything on him. For 5 days, he was tormented by being locked in a cage at VSH. In the end, we had to put him to sleep without him getting to come home and see Rocky, Delilah, or Jin. The only regret I have with Zeus is that his end was all pain and torment. I don’t want to repeat that with Rocky.